


Resurrection Blues

by atamascolily



Series: A Grief Observed [4]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: New Republic Era - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Awkward Conversations, Be Careful What You Wish For, Character Death, Clones, F/M, Grief/Mourning, Plot Twists
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-07
Updated: 2018-07-17
Packaged: 2019-06-06 20:01:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15202394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atamascolily/pseuds/atamascolily
Summary: When Mara Jade kills the original Luke Skywalker by accident during their battle with Joruus C'baoth on Wayland, she takes custody of the clone Luuke for reasons she doesn't fully understand.





	1. Chapter 1

Mara Jade spent five years plotting Luke Skywalker's demise, but when she finally murdered him, it was an accident. 

You could call it friendly fire, though it's very _unfriendly_ to stab your ally through the chest with his own lightsaber in the midst of battle. The look on Luke's face, though, wasn't one of hurt or betrayal, like she might have expected under the circumstances. It was calm. Understanding. Perhaps even peace. 

He cried out as his gaze meets hers, but death by lightsaber is mercifully quick. There wasn't time for anything more than a complex emotional flare between them as he rocked forward--

 _YOU WILL KILL LUKE SKYWALKER--_ Palapatine's last command echoed in her head--only to abruptly cut off as Luke's body hit the ground. 

And just like that, she was free. 

There was no time to stop and mourn. 

Karrde, Solo, and Organa Solo were unconscious under the rockslide that the insane Jedi master Joruus C'baoth had leveled on them. In all the dust and haze, she couldn't see the clone Luuke, who had been stalking her since the battle began ten minutes ago. Luuke looked just like the original Skywalker, except that he was an extension of C'baoth's will with no mind of his own. 

It was just her now, alone against one mind divided into two bodies. One mind that demanded nothing less than her unconditional surrender, so he could remake her in his own image in a way that Palpatine never dared. 

_Surrender--_

And in a flash of insight, Mara knew how to win. 

"Master!" she called out, turning to face C'baoth's dais with a regal flare. "I have rid you of that troublesome Skywalker, since he refused to serve you. I yield to your strength and power. I accept only you as my master now." 

She clamped down _hard_ on everything in her mind that wasn't love and adoration for the megalomaniac on the dais twenty meters away. She pretended it was Palpatine there--that helped, a little. All her life, she'd been an actor, trained to hide her feelings in matters great and small, so many endless hours cloaked in masks that veiled what was truly inside. All of it was preparation for the moment where she opened herself to a mad Jedi, and gambled that he would be fooled by what he found there. 

But Joruus C'baoth _wanted_ to be fooled. He had seen Mara kneeling at his feet in a vision, and he believed with all his might that such a future would be fulfilled. If he suspected treachery in such a sudden change of heart, he kept it to himself. 

Instead, he welcomed her and ordered her to approach--and, of course, kneel.

Extinguishing his lightsaber, the clone Luuke emerged from the haze and flanked her--an eerily silent escort for his master's newest toy, still wearing that same vacant expression he'd had during their batle. Mara, hazy with adrenaline, was gasping for breath, but refused to let her body's condition distract her from her task: to get close to C'baoth to kill him and end this nightmare once and for all. 

Four meters from the dais, she stumbled, her concentration slipped, and the game was up. She broke into a run to clearing the gap between them, ignited lightsaber in hand, as C'baoth roared in hatred and rage. She ducked and rolled to the floor, just in time to avoid the clone's lightsaber slicing through the space she had occupied seconds before. 

But she couldn't avoid the a jagged stream of Force lightning issued from C'baoth's fingers as he came forward off the dais towards her, screaming unintelligbly. But she had too much momentum for this to stop her, and C'baoth had just put himself within reach. 

She thrust upward with all her strength and impaled C'baoth straight through the chest--the same way she had impaled the original Skywalker a few moments before. 

The clone shrieked, the first sound Mara had heard him make, and staggered forward as his puppeteer crumbled. She barely made it out of the way of his lightsaber, which fell to the ground with a buzzy clatter and rolled away across the dais. 

And then C'baoth exploded in a violent burst of blue-white energy. She and the clone were both enveloped in the fire, and, mercifully, the pain only lasted for a second before everything went black.

***

Something warm and wet dripped across her temple and down her cheek. She opened her eyes to mouths full of teeth, as Karrde tried and failed to keep his pet vornskrs from licking her face. 

"Come on, Sturm, come on, Drang," he urged them, tugging at their collars. Whining and spitting, they dug in their heels, eager to continue their ministrations. With a sigh, Karrde gave up and let them continue drooling on her. 

Mara moaned and rolled over, pushing the vornskrs away. They yelped with delight, and veered off, clearly satisfied at her reaction. 

"Mara! You're awake!" Karrde said in surprise, kneeling by her side as Sturm and Drang darted away. "How do you feel?" 

Old reflexes kicked in, and she dispassionately assessed her injuries in an attempt to answer honestly. 

She ached like bloody hell and the skin on her face and arms was flayed and raw. Vornskr saliva must have some sort of anesthetic quality, because the sections Sturm and Drang had licked were cool and numb instead of burning. But she was alive, and nothing was broken. That was good. She hadn't expected to survive that last explosion. 

"I'm all right," she said, forcing herself to sit up. "How's Skywalker?" 

Karrde glanced to the side, and Mara followed his gaze to where Skywalker lay on his back a few meters away. His body was draped in a sheet from the emergency medkit, which hid the wound she'd inflicted on him. But any hope she had that the last few moments of battle had been a nightmare evaporated as she took in the stillness of the body and the blank expression in his open, unblinking blue eyes. 

She drew in a deep breath, tried to say something--and couldn't. There were no words. 

Having succeded at waking Mara, Sturm and Drang padded over to Skywalker's corpse and began nuzzling him in a fruitless but endearing attempt to revive him. Karrde whistled to them, but as before, they ignored him and kept up their efforts. 

Mara stared. For the first time, there was no echo of Palpatine's voice in her mind when she looked at Skywalker, only the dull, sickening realization that he was dead-- 

_You will kill Luke Skywalker--_ the Emperor had commanded. 

And she had. Finally, after all these years, she had. 

She had fantasized about Skywalker's death for ages--plotted it in all her spare moments, waking and sleeping alike. Then when he'd stumbled into her life, and she'd been forced to work with him, to keep him alive, and come to know him--only to realize that maybe _she_ didn't want him dead, the ghost who haunted her mind did. 

A ghost who had manipulated and deceived her. Sought to control her even after his death. 

A ghost who cared nothing for Mara's happiness, who valued her only as the agent of his revenge on Skywalker. 

A ghost whom she'd loved and adored for most of her life. A ghost who had betrayed her. 

For the first time in her life, she was truly free of his influence.

But staring down at the corpse of the man she'd murdered, she realized that her freedom wasn't worth the price she'd had to pay for it. 

_It wasn't supposed to be like this,_ she thought. _It wasn't supposed to be like this--_

There had been no need for her to kill Skywalker. He'd been--an ally, if not exactly a friend, and a good one at that. She'd trusted him with her life. He'd trusted her with his, even after she'd threatened to kill him. And then, by mistake, she had--

She'd long since lost track of of all the blood on her hands. So much death, so many knives in the dark--or poison, or blasters. But she'd _meant_ to kill all the others. As far as she could recall, she'd never killed someone accidently, especially not up close, at point blank range. Not like this. 

She'd aimed for the clone and somehow--she had turned around and hit Skywalker instead. Had C'baoth confused her mind? Was it Palpatine's order, manipulating her into achieving his revenge? Or had she screwed up--royally screwed up--of her own accord? 

There was no way to know, and it didn't matter. Skywalker was dead at her hand, and no Jedi had even been able to come back from the dead before. The Sith claimed it was possible, but she had yet to see any succeed. If Palpatine had been able to return, he would have done so long before now-- 

Solo and Organa Solo were engaged in a heated argument behind her. When she turned, the source of their disagreement was obvious: the clone Luuke, flopped against a rock, blank-eyed and staring, with Solo's blaster pointed directly at him. Except for the rise and fall of his still-intact chest, he was eerily indistinguishable from the other Skywalker stretched out in the rubble.

Considering that C'baoth ripped apart the clone's mind, so that he has no free will of his own, Mara was impressed the clone had survived this long. 

One detail nagged at her. _The clone had no burns_. Given the size and violence of the explosion, both of them should be dead. As is it is, Mara's burns were only a fraction of what they ought to be. It was as if something yanked them back to safety with the Force just in time--but who? Luke and C'baoth were both dead at that point, the clone certainly wouldn't have saved them both, and Mara didn't think Organa Solo was strong enough, even had she been conscious. So--had Mara instinctively jerked both herself and the clone away from the explosion? Since when had she ever been strong enough to-- 

She was too tired to grapple with the implications. She needed all her energy to focus on the present right now. 

"Han, stop it," Organa Solo said, tugging at her husband's free arm. "Killing him won't bring Luke back." 

Solo: "It's a _clone_. One of C'baoth's creatures. We have to kill it before it wakes up and tries to kill _us_. Again."

"No." Mara wasn't aware the words had left her mouth until she saw the incredulous look on Solo's face as his attention (but not his blaster) shifted over to her. Organa Solo and Karrde were staring too--Karrde with surprise and Organa Solo with interest. 

"No?" Solo repeated. "Surely you of all people should understand--" 

"No," she said. "I won't let you kill him." Haltingly, she got to her feet and began to move towards the clone, deliberately placing herself in Solo's line of fire. "If you want to kill him, you'll have to go through me." 

Solo started to say something, but Organa Solo puts a hand on her husband's shoulder and he fell silent. 

"What do you have in mind, Mara?" she asked. There was an odd, curious expression on her face that Mara didn't know how to translate. 

Mara let out a breath. Organa Solo was so calm and still, considering that her brother was dead, and it was all Mara's fault. 

Then again--Organa Solo had been buried under the rockfall when Skywalker died. Did she know the truth? Had she seen Mara murder her brother by mistake? Or did she and Solo assume that the clone had been responsible? 

"I don't know," she said, to herself as much as Organa Solo "I just--it doesn't seem right to kill him." 

Of course, Organa Solo asked the reasonable follow-up: "What should we do with him, then?" 

"I'll take him," Mara said. "Maybe he'll get better." Even before the words had left her mouth, she cursed herself for an idiot for such naivete.

But if she'd saved the clone from the explosion, there must have been a reason for it. And she was so, so tired of death and destruction. 

Solo laughed bitterly. "You heard C'baoth. He made that clone an extension of himself. There's no one there inside to bring back. Just _look_ at him."

"I'll take the chance," Mara said grimly, her heart speeding up as she prepared to lay out all her cards out on the table. If Solo was going to shoot her, she might as well deserve it. "Look, I already killed one Luke Skywalker today. I don't want another to die on my watch!" 

Silence. Solo's blaster was still pointing at her, and she could see from his expression that he wasn't sure if he should pull the trigger or not. 

"Ah," Organa Solo said evenly as she met Mara's gaze. "I see. Penance." 

Sure. Mara wasn't sure why she was doing what she was doing, but she was committed now, so she nodded. 

Karrde cleared his throat. "Mara is right. There have been enough deaths already today. And personally, I'd appreciate it if you refrained from threatening one of my people," he said with a nod to Solo. "Whatever crimes she may or may not have committed, it is not your place to dispense justice here, as I believe your wife would point out. Furthermore, it goes without saying that if you harm her, things will not go well for you." 

"Are you _threatening_ me?" Solo's voice rose, and Mara realized that the man was fighting back tears, searching desperate for an outlet on which to inflict his rage and grief. The tip of Solo's blaster dipped from Mara and the clone towards Karrde, then swung back to its original targets. 

Karrde refused to be intimidated. "Not in the slightest. I _promise_ you that if you hurt Mara, you _will_ regret it." 

Organa Solo had had enough. "Stop it, both of you," she ordered, her tone icy. And then, more gently: "Han. Hurting them won't bring Luke back." 

For a second, Mara thought that Solo would ignore his wife and shoot her anyway. She was so tired and shaky, she wouldn't be able to dodge in time. But she couldn't walk away from the clone now. 

She'd killed the original Skywalker and she'd killed C'baoth. She wasn't going to let the clone die today, too. 

With a sigh, Solo holstered his blaster, embraced his wife, and the standoff was over. 

Mara's knees wobbled and she fell over on top of the clone, who didn't even twitch at the impact. Karrde helped her back up to her feet, sliding an arm around her shoulder for support. 

"It's a long way back to where we left the _Falcon_ ," she gasped. "I hope you docked a little closer. I'm not feeling up to a hike right now."

"No need." Karrde pointed to a huge hole in the wall of the throne room, presumbably from C'boath's messy exit. "I'll call the _Wild Karrde_ and have them pick us up right here." 

"Did Calrissian and the Wookiee destroy the cloning facility?" Mara asked, abruptly remembering the other part of the mission. Their problems hadn't stopped with C'baoth's death. As long as those machines were up and running, the Empire could produce more bodies to press into service -- or worse, more _Jedi_ \--

Karrde waves her off. "As far as I know, everything here of importance has been destroyed," he said to Organa Solo and her husband. "Right?" 

"We'll have teams go through it all later to be sure," Organa Solo said. "Right now, the most important thing is to get back to Coruscant and deal with Thrawn." 

Solo cleared his throat. "Err-- Karrde--I don't suppose that you'd be willing to drop us back off where we left the _Falcon_ \--?" Clearly, he found it awkward to ask a favor of the man he'd threatened moments ago.

Fortunately, Karrde wasn't one to let past unpleasantness get in the way of business. "Of course," he said, smiling broadly. "And while we're waiting, I have some ideas I'd like to discuss with you two--" 

***

Mara missed most of the conversation that followed as she faded in and out of consciousness. Karrde was all too happy to fill her in when she woke some hours later in her private quarters on the _Wild Karrde_ after three separate rounds in the bacta tank. 

"Big news," he told her, and it was true. While she slept, they'd received word that Thrawn was dead, and the Empire had retreated in the disarray. Coruscant was free, and everyone in the New Republic was jubilant. Against all odds, they had triumphed. 

In addition to accepting Karrde's plans for a smuggler's alliance and other business matters, Solo and Organa Solo had agreed to keep Skywalker's death a secret for the time being. The official story was that Luke Skywalker had fallen into a coma during their battle with C'baoth -- an accurate enough description of the clone right now. If by some miracle, the clone recovers his sanity, it would be easy enough to re-introduce him as the original to the galaxy at large. 

There would be rumors, of course, of conspiracies and cover-ups, but without proof, such whispers could be easily dealth with. Besides, Jedi were mysterious, the stuff of legends, and vanished Jedi even more so. As long as none of the witnesses admitted the truth, nothing could be proven. 

Karrde had worked everything out so neatly, except for the fact that the original Skywalker was still dead. She told him that. 

He frowned at her. "Sadly, Mara, I'm a businessman, not a miracle worker. I do my best." 

Mara wasn't sure why she was so shaken by Skywalker's death, or why she kept coming back to it, over and over again. Even as Karrde spoke, her gaze kept flickering over to the clone, who was motionless on a portable medical cot on the other side of the room, an IV hooked into his arm. 

He noticed her distraction, of course, but he didn't mention it. 

"Won't the crew wonder why Skywalker came with with us instead of going back on the _Falcon_?" 

Karrde smiled. "Give me _some_ credit, Mara. You know I trust my people to be discreet." 

Good. The crew knew, but they'd keep their mouths shut, at least to outsiders. And though they'd be curious, they were unlikely to question Mara directly-- her dislike of small talk was widely known.

"Has he--?" she started, gesturing towards the clone. 

"No. Nothing. No reaction whatsoever." 

"You think this is a fool's effort, then," Mara said, sagging back into her bedding with a sigh. 

"I don't know," Karrde said. "We're beyond my realm of expertise here. On the cutting edge of knowledge, as it were. Perhaps he'll recover. Perhaps not. I suspect you know more than I do about this." 

"Why are you helping me?" Mara asked. "I don't see how it benefits you or the organization." 

Karrde shrugged. "We'll see. Clone or not, Skywalker is a valuable presence in galactic politics, and not one to be lightly tossed aside. He may yet prove useful to us. And besides, everyone has their eccentricities." He paused to brush a piece of dust off his immaculately tailored jacket. "As long as yours don't interfere with your work, I don't see why it should be a problem. I trust you'll keep him confined to your quarters?" 

She nodded. Luuke was... unsettling, to say the least, particularly if you knew the original. The last thing she wanted was more fodder for gossip among the crew. 

"All right then," Karrde said, and rose to his feet as if to leave, though he stopped just before he reached the door.

"I'm so glad you're still with us, Mara," he said. "I was worried for a time that we had lost you for good. But Sturm and Drang never gave up on you, and refused to leave your side until you awoke." 

Mara remembered the slobbery warmth of vornskr spittle on her face, and nodded slowly. "I saw they tried that with Skywalker, too," she said. "The original, I mean." 

Karrde nodded. "It's funny," he said. "They wouldn't leave him, they just kept licking his face over and over again as if they expected him to wake up at any moment. I had to forcibly restrain them so Solo could retrieve the body. I don't understand it." 

_Who knows why vornskrs do what they do,_ Mara thought, and wondered why Sturm and Drang's eccentricities mattered so much to her. But it was odd that they made a beeline for Skywalker, when they hadn't expressed any interest in the clone at all--

"Good night, Mara." 

"Good night," she echoed, as the door closed behind him, leaving her alone with the clone. The only sounds were the soft beeping of the IV machine at his side, and her own rattling breath. 

She waited until he'd left the room to give a long, soft moan of frustration and grief, the closest thing she had to tears.


	2. Chapter 2

To Mara's dismay, Organa Solo turned up on the _Wild Karrde_ the next morning asking to see her. Mara met with her in her private quarters, not because she wanted to, but because she couldn't turn the woman away, and thought it better for any conversation to be private. 

When Organa Solo pulled out two lightsabers, Mara's first reaction was that Skywalker's sister had decided that she should die after all. She blinked in surprise when Organa Solo handed both weapons, hilt first, to her instead. "He would want you to have them," she said, leaving it ambiguous whether Mara or the clone was the intended recipient. 

"I told you I was going to kill your brother," Mara said dully. "And I did." 

Organa Solo shook her head. "It wasn't your fault, Mara. It was an accident, I know it was. And even if it was your hand that killed him, it wasn't really you, it was the Emperor acting through you." 

"How do you know?" 

Organa Solo looked at her with that eerily calm, all-too-understanding expression Mara recognized from the throne room on Mount Tantiss, the mask behind which she held her grief. "Blaming you doesn't bring Luke back. And I that trust my judgement of you earlier wasn't wrong." 

Mara felt her cheeks growing hot with embarrassment. She didn't want pity, but compassion was worse, and she didn't want that either. Especially not from Skywalker's Jedi sister, New Republic chancellor and survivor of the Alderaanian genocide, who had lost far too much already. 

The truth was that despite Organa Solo's reassurances, Mara didn't _know_ exactly what had happened in that moment, what she had or hadn't meant to do, whether her actions had been sloppy, coerced, unconscious, or deliberate. Regardless of the motive, they all led to the same outcome: Skywalker dead, and the unconscious clone stretched out on the medical table before them in Mara's private quarters. 

"I'm sorry," Mara said at last, because it was all she could think of to say that was also true. 

"I know," Organa Solo said. 

They sat together for a long time in silence, watching the clone's chest rise and fall, his blank eyes staring at nothing, before Organa Solo finally excused herself and slipped away. 

***

After Organa Solo's departure, Mara put the lightsabers away, and returned to the clone's bedside. Despite sharing her quarters with him for several days now, she still hadn't gotten used to the clone's uncanny resemblance to Skywalker.

And yet--there were subtle differences she could appreciate, once she examined him more closely. The clone had never labored on a desert dustball for two decades pulling water out of the atmosphere, never flown against the Empire, never tussled with Vader and Palpatine and who knows what else in his struggles to become a Jedi. The clone had been manufactured in a vat from the recovered remains of Skywalker's right hand, growing from a single cell to maturity in the span of six months--possibly sooner, if they'd accelerated the growth chambers. No sooner had he stumbled wet and dripping out of the vat then C'baoth had ripped his mind apart and re-molded it according to his own whims. 

Though he was dead now, Skywalker had _lived_ , a life full of insane adventures that most folk could only dream about. The clone, while he was technically alive, had never experienced life, only a grim, mindless servitude no different from the life of a droid. Worse, in fact, since droids could be self-aware and the clone certainly wasn't. 

Had Thrawn ordered his creation, Mara wondered, or had this been one of C'baoth's little iniatives after the original Skywalker refused to serve him on Jomark? Were there more Luukes out there, scattered on unknown worlds, waiting for their cues to emerge from their hiding places and wreak havoc on the galaxy in their master's name? 

The thought made her shiver. One clone of Skywalker was bad enough. She didn't want to deal with any more of them. She was very glad she had killed C'baoth herself and that Thrawn was dead. Whatever traps they might have left, at least those two were out of the picture. 

And given how tenuous Joruus C'baoth's grip on sanity had been, she ought to be grateful that Skywalker's clone lacked iniative to carry out any mad visions of his own... 

Mara sat down on the bed next to the clone, brushed the sandy blond hair that had fallen into his eyes, and placed her hand on his forehead. What she was about to do was creepy and wrong, and she knew it, but she was going to do it anyway. It was either that or share her quarters with a living vegetable, and she didn't think she could handle more than a few days of that. 

For the first time since the fight on Mount Tantiss, Mara closed her eyes and reached out with the Force to touch the clone. 

As she suspected, that got his attention. Suddenly the clone's eyes were focused on her, and she felt a flare of emotions stir within him, too simple and primitive and raw for words, primed with attention and obedience. _Master?_

Mara felt sick to her stomach. Whatever Palpatine might have done with her mind was nothing compared to what C'baoth had done to the clone. Palpatine had manipulated her, but he'd left her mind intact so she could operate independently and serve him freely. She might have been killed if she had refused (though it had never occurred to her to refuse until after his death) but he had always left that choice up to her. C'baoth had not been so merciful to his servants. 

"I'm not your master," Mara said aloud, more for her own sake than the clone's. "He's dead." She thought about mentioning that she had killed him, and decided not to. The last thing she wanted was to trigger any implanted protocols for posthumous revenge. "My name is Mara. What's yours?" 

She cursed herself for an idiot, even as she spoke, but to her surprise, the clone answered in her mind, a series of mental images and memories, of C'baoth gesturing towards him, calling-- _Luuke_. 

"That's right, your name is Luuke," Mara agreed. "Can you talk?" She offered a mental picture of what she meant in case her meaning was unclear. "I mean, using your voice and spoken words." 

The clone scrabbled for a moment, a harsh grating sound. His teeth and tongue were visible as he opened and closed his mouth in a grotesque parody of speech, but no intelligible words came out. 

There was nothing wrong with him physically that would keep him from speaking, Mara realized in horror. C'baoth had simply ripped out the parts of the clone's brain that controlled speech, so that the only way the clone could communicate was via the Force. 

It was a good thing C'baoth was already dead, because Mara would have killed him herself, as violently and as painfully as possible, for what he had done here to the clone. For what he'd done many times before. For what he would have cheerfully done to her, had the opportunity arisen. 

No one--not even a clone--deserved this. 

"All right," Mara said, when she'd recovered herself. "Let's get you out of this. Can you stand?" 

He could. She summoned the medical droid to remove the IV and the catheter that tethered him to the bed, and when that was finished, she helped him rise to his feet. He wavered and swayed as she let go of him, but stood firm, his eyes locked on hers, and she realized he wasn't going to move unless she ordered otherwise. 

Mara groaned inwardly, cursing C'baoth yet again for his cruelties.

"Fine. Sit down. We'll try something else for now," Mara said, handing him a ration bar. "This is food. Do you know how to eat it?" 

He put one end of it in his mouth and began chewing before she had finished her statement. 

"No, no, you have to take the wrapper off first," Mara said, snatching it out of his hands and shucking off the flimisplast. "Like so. _Then_ you can eat it." 

Obediently, the clone chewed and swallowed, this time without incident. 

Mara sighed. "If this is how you react to food, I am _not_ looking forward to teaching you how to use a 'fresher."

As she expected, there was no response from the clone. 

***

Life settled into a routine, and every morning began the same way. She dreamed she was walking the halls of the _Wild Karrde_ , with Skywalker's ghost trailing along behind her, desperate to engage her, unfazed by the cauterized hole in his chest where she'd stabbed him. Numb with terror and guilt, Mara ran from him, but wherever she went, he followed. Mercifully, she always woke right before he cornered her. 

Gasping for breath, she would stare at the shiny duraplast ceiling in her quarters, reminded once again that she was alive and free of the Emperor's last command. She was alive, Skywalker was dead, and the clone was laid out on his bed, his eyes blank and staring at nothing until Mara reached out with the Force to wake him.

They ate ration bars together, and the clone drank water and used the 'fresher freely now that she had given him permission to decide for himself when he needed them. Thankfully, he'd been a quick study and Mara had only had to explain the 'fresher protocol once before he'd been capable enough to handle those functions on his own. After locking the door to her room, she left for the bridge of the _Wild Karrde_ , to meet with Karrde and attend to whatever business he had planned for the day. 

There was no shortage of things to do. In the power vacuum of the Empire's retreat, Karrde was consolidating his operations and the ambitious alliance of smugglers he was shaping into a legitimate coalition in New Republic space. She attended meetings, made holo calls, supervised the crew, and brainstormed new ideas and solutions with Karrde, forcing herself into the cool, professional mold she had cultivated for so many years. She was grateful for anything to get her mind off what had happened on Wayland--or the blank-eyed Skywalker clone staring into space in her quarters while he waited for her to return.

Karrde watched her closely now, as if he suspected how taut and tenuous her control was, but she ignored the subtle overtures of concern that he sent her as she retreated further into her familiar mask. As blurry and grim as she felt these days, she couldn't bear the thought of losing her work. It was the only thing that kept her going, the only thing she had to look forward to, the only thing that distracted her from Skywalker's death and that goddamn clone she'd adopted out of a sense of guilt and obligation. 

But that battle on Wayland had changed her, and there was no going back to her old self, no matter how hard she pretended otherwise. Skywalker's death had shaken something loose inside her; Palpatine's voice was gone. Her grasp of the Force--tenuous and erratic in the aftermath of the Emperor's death--had shifted and strengthened, swelling within her like a tidal wave of power. She wondered how much of her energy had been spent unconsciously resisting her master's control--or how much of her gift he had locked away from her. She didn't know. She couldn't know. She was glad he was dead, and she never had to find out.

Skywalker would know what was happening to her, if anyone did. But Skywalker was dead, and it was all her fault, and his clone had no answers. 

To make matters worse, Sturm and Drang acted unpredictably in her presence--slavering, whistling, whining, as if they saw her as prey. Once Sturm rushed at her with such enthusiasm that he'd almost knocked her down; she would have fallen had Drang not been behind her in his own eagerness to get to her. Karrde apologized profusely for his pets' behavior, and kept the vornskrs tightly restrained to prevent any more unpleasant incidents, but she could tell that their sudden shift in behavior bothered him, too. Even when they were restrained, the vornskrs stared at her with their tawny alien eyes as if they could see something she couldn't over her shoulder, some aura she carried with her. It was unsettling, and it only added to her sense of self-conscious dread. She felt guilty about whatever she had done to make the vornskrs so excited, even though she had no idea what they might be responding to, or what exactly had changed. 

She might have been free of Palpatine, she thought, but she'd traded one ghost for another. She kept seeing Skywalker out of the corner of her eyes, but there was nothing but emptiness whenever she turned for a better look. Palpatine's command might have been annoying, but at least he left her _alone_ most of the time. There was no such relief this time with Skywalker.

Then again, she hadn't been personally responsible for Palpatine's death the way she was for Skywalker's. She supposed that she deserved whatever pain she suffered as a result of his murder.

So it was a relief when Karrde asked her to be the official liaison between the New Republic government and the Smuggler's Alliance. This meant being on the same planet as Organa Solo and her husband, of course, but Coruscant was a big place, and she decided she could handle any lingering awkwardness if they happened to attend the same functions. After all, she was a professional, and so was Organa Solo. They would grit their teeth and make nice in public, even if they didn't like each other. 

Moving to Coruscant meant getting off the ship, away from Karrde's concern and his vornskrs' staring eyes, meant renting an apartment big enough to comfortably house two people, one of whom never moved unless she gave him orders with her mind. Smuggling him off the ship without detection wasn't hard, and once she had moved in, she never had to see him unless she wanted to. 

Life would have been easier if she had let him die on Mount Tantiss, but she hadn't, and she couldn't abandon him now. He was her responsibility, a living reminder of her guilt over Skywalker's death, a ghostly simulacra that would haunt her for the rest of her days, as she deserved. 

_It's almost as if you_ want _to suffer_ , she thought to herself one evening, leaning back in her chair with a glass of fine Niphrelian wine, while the clone sat stiff and ramrod straight across the table from her. 

She could talk to him, and sometimes she did, but it wasn't much fun because she had to supply both ends of the conversation. Only an insane narcissist like C'baoth would find that desirable, she had concluded. As frustrating as other people could be, at least they were capable of surprising her--just as Skywalker always had. 

There were still odd incidents, as her Force powers flickered into action without conscious input on her part. Electronic doors jammed after she touched them. Droids malfunctioned as she walked past them. Lights failed when she looked at them. Sometimes she woke from her dreams of being pursued by Skywalker's ghost to find herself wreathed in blue-white Force lightning, with objets d'art and furniture levitating and spinning around her bed. None of it ever hurt anyone, but it was damn startling and left her sick and cold on the inside as she realized how tenuous her control was. 

It wasn't the clone. He could use the Force, but only when she prompted him. She didn't think he was behind this. It had to be her. 

She didn't know what was happening, and she didn't know where to go or who to talk to. The only person she could think of who might know was Skywalker, and he was dead. 

Still, she would survive. She would get by. She was good at that, had always been good at that. She'd outlived Palpatine and his Empire, and she'd outlived Skywalker, too. She would figure it out, and move forward towards a better life. Even if she had no idea what that might look like anymore. 

Somehow--somehow--the clone was the key. She knew it deep in her bones, even if she didn't know why or how she knew or what it meant. She would be patient. She would wait. She would figure it out. 

She drank her wine as she fingered the hilt of Skywalker's lightsaber--the same weapon she had used to kill him. It was poetic justice, she decided, that Organa Solo had given it to her. It was another Skywalker legacy that she hadn't wanted, but was unable to surrender now that it was hers.


	3. Chapter 3

The buzzer rang, announcing a visitor. 

Mara's head snapped back in surprise, and she dropped the lightsaber, almost spilling her wine in the process. This was unheard of. She _never_ had visitors. She would go to dinner with Karrde when he was on-planet, or attend the fashionable soirees and receptions that were de rigueur for an up-and-coming trade representative here on Coruscant--but she never invited anyone over to her private quarters, for any reason. Period. Nor had she ordered anything recently that would require home delivery. 

It was a break in her routine, a crack in her carefully constructed world, and she didn't like it. 

Across the table, the clone dropped his blank expression to mimic hers. The surprise and annoyance were not expressions the original Skywalker had worn often, and it didn't suit him. No doubt it was spillover from their tenuous Force connections, but it was unsettling and she didn't like it. This had happened on several occasions in recent weeks, and he hadn't figured out how to convince the clone it was a problem; his grasp of emotional and mental boundaries was wildly distorted by his time with C'baoth. But she didn't have time to wrestle with that problem now. 

Mara grabbed the lightsaber off the floor and clipped to her belt with one hand, the other checking to ensure her holdout blaster was still in its case in her boot next to the vibroknife. She hadn't needed to use any weapon since Wayland, but the habits were far too engrained for her to break now. Besides, life was unpredictable, and she never wanted to be unprepared. 

"You stay here," she ordered the clone, and stalked off towards the door to investigate. Her jangled nerves shrieked warnings, and she was not looking forward to finding out if they were correct. 

The viewscreen showed no one outside, only buzzing static. Mara frowned. The buzzer rang again, more insistent this time. 

She reached for the hold-out blaster, palming it in case she had to make a quick shot. Whatever was out there was most likely innocuous--a mistaken service droid or an accidental delivery drone--but the malfunctioning viewscreen made her even more jumpy than usual, and she didn't want to take any chances. She didn't feel anything dangerous when she reached out tentatively with the Force--but given how erratic her control was these days, that didn't necessarily mean anything. 

The safe, easy thing to do would be to ignore the buzzer, go back to her dinner and her half-finished glass of wine, and leave whoever it was to stew outside until they gave up and went away. But she was angry now, and more than a little curious, and the thought of a fight--or at least a vicious tongue-lashing--was surprisingly appealing right now. 

To hell with caution. She unbolted the door and yanked it open in one swift motion, careful as she did so to keep as much of her body covered as possible, swinging the blaster up in her other hand in case she needed it--

\--only to discover her old colleague Zakarisz Ghent, now the newly appointed Crypt Chief of New Republic Intelligence. From the tousled blue hair puffed in uncombed tendrils around his neck, the rumpled leggings, and the faded 'Mutants of Ceramigosta V' tunic, he might have rolled out of bed moments ago. Mara was familiar enough with Ghent's erratic working hours to know this was precisely the case. 

What the hell was Ghent, of all people, doing outside her door at this hour? Since when had he cared about anything besides his precious computers, let alone normal human socializing-- 

Ghent cleared his throat. "Hi, Mara," he said, remarkably cheerful under the circumstances. "How are you?"

She slid the blaster back in her holster, and relaxed her grip on the doorframe for the moment. The refreshing thing about Ghent was that diplomacy was wasted on him. "Ghent. What the hell are you doing here?" 

"I--er, wanted to see how you were doing," Ghent said, his voice trailing off in the way of someone who understood the intellectual importance of social niceties, but hadn't yet mastered the practical applications. "And I got this message from someone who wanted to see you--someone who wouldn't leave me alone unless I took them along--" 

"Why the hell didn't this person contact me himself?" Mara snarled, wishing she hadn't been so quick to holster the blaster. "Fuck it, Ghent, don't you have better things to do than be my social escort? Is this what the New Republic is paying for now?" 

"He--er, said you wouldn't want to meet him when you knew who he was, which is why I disabled your door viewscreen--" He broke off as Mara glared at him, and looked off down to the hallway to someone she couldn't see. "Look, maybe it's easier if you see for yourself--" 

As he spoke, a familiar blue and white R2 unit trundled around the corner, and everything fell into place. 

"Oh, it's _you_ ," Mara said in disgust. "I should have known." 

She didn't need to understand Binary to know that Skywalker's obnoxious astromech agreed with her assessment. They'd worked together on several missions, but their relationship had always been rocky since the droid was devoted to Skywalker and she had been determined to kill him. 

"He--er, was devastated to learn about Skywalker's accident," Ghent explained haltingly as he translated the flurry of beeps and whistles issuing from the R2 unit. "He wanted to see him in his hospital room, but was repeatedly denied access. When he sliced into the hospital database, he found that it was empty and Skywalker's true location was heavily classified. Eventually, he determined that Skywalker was in your custody, and reached out to me for help."

"You're a little sneak, you know that, right?" Mara said to the droid. 

The R2 unit was defiantly unapologetic. 

"He didn't think you would see him without my assistance," Ghent said. 

Mara had to agree with that assessment. The last time she''d been alone with the droid, he'd shot at her with an X-wing laser canon until Skywalker had intervened. She pursed her lips. "Wouldn't leave you alone until you agreed, is more like it." 

Ghent smiled wanly. "Yes, he was very--er-- _persuasive_ about that." 

More unapologetic squeals and whistles from the R2 unit. 

"I bet he was," Mara muttered under her breath. She turned to the droid. "Get used to disappointment. I can't help you." 

The R2 unit deflated as if she had punched it with a hydrospanner and ripped out its processing core. It moaned softly in a vain attempt to appeal to her sympathy.

"Please, Mara?" Ghent said. "He just wants to see Skywalker again, and he'll leave you alone." 

She was unsurprised that Ghent had fallen for R2 unit's anthropomorphic imitations. He was a good enough slicer to know better than to fall for that act, but he was a sucker when it came to underdogs and lost causes. It was one reason why New Republic Intelligence had been able to lure him away from Karrde's organization. She ought to tell them both to go to hell and leave her alone. If the R2 unit learned the fate of the original Skywalker, he might well try to kill her again.

But it was rare to see such loyalty and independence--such devotion--in a droid. If he saw what was left of Skywalker's clone, he might indeed go away and leave her alone.

Perhaps. 

"Fine," Mara said shortly, cursing herself for a fool and knowing she would regret this, but unable to stop herself. "Come in--both of you." 

She ignored the R2 unit's triumphant whistle as it followed her through the doorway. It may have gotten its way so far, but she doubted it would be so cheerful once it had seen Skywalker's clone for itself. 

***

She led her guests past the kitchen and into the living room. The clone was sitting at the table, just as Mara had left him. The astromech beeped excitedly as he caught a glimpse of Skywalker's familiar figure on his scanners, and sped up, passing her rapidly as he sought to reach his master. 

Mara leaned against the wall, folded her arms over her chest, and waited for the drama to begin. "Well. Here he is. Go ahead and say hello." 

The clone didn't move as the astromech approached, nor did his face flicker from that emotionless mask at the R2 unit's incessant beeping. Even though she knew it was coming, she was surprised at how heart-wrenching it was to watch the enthusiastic whistles transition to questioning, desperate squeals as the droid bumped into the clone's knees over and over again, begging for acknowledgment and response. 

After several minutes of this display with no results, the droid backed off, and turned back to Mara and Ghent with a single soft, imploring note. 

"He wants to know what happened," Ghent translated softly beside her. 

To Mara's horror, she was fighting back tears. It was bad enough to watch this display, but she was damned if she would cry in front of a droid. _Especially_ a droid capable of going rogue and attempting to murder her again if he knew she was responsible for the original Skywalker's death. She was so very tired and the last thing she wanted to do was explain the situation, but there was no way out of it now. 

"Skywalker is dead," she said, watching the droid carefully as she spoke. "We discovered that C'baoth had made a clone, Luuke, who fell into a coma when his master died. Solo wanted to kill him, but I insisted that we bring him back with us." 

Ghent's mouth dropped open. "Wow, this is even _weirder_ than I expected," he said, unable to keep the fascination out of his voice. "I knew there was some sort of cover-up when I saw the fabricated hospital IDs.... but I never, in my wildest dreams, would have imagined a _clone_..." 

The droid was still looking at her. It had only one question for her, which required no translation: _Why?_

It was the same damn question that everyone asked her. And she had the same unsatisfying answer for them, every time. 

"I don't know," she said. 

"Will he recover?" Ghent asked, on the R2 unit's behalf. 

For a moment, she was tempted to reach out with the Force, to ask the clone to twist his face in disgust, push the astromech away--or even unclamp her shields enough to let her own discomfort leak out along their tenuous Force connection and break the droid's spirit. At the same time, she imagined the opposite: the clone's face alight up with joy and recognition as he embraced his stalwart, loyal astromech who had never given up on him despite all the obstacles and New Republic privacy laws in its path. She could give the droid the culmination of its fantasy, give it what it most hoped to see. 

She did neither of those things. The clone's face remained blank and expressionless as the silence stretched out between them. 

"I don't know," she said again. "He can walk. He can move. He can eat. But he's not all there. Something is missing and I don't know how to get it back." 

She paused. She took a deep breath. She didn't know what she was going to say, and she was startled by the words that popped out of her mouth. 

"Can you help me?" 

Even as she spoke, she flushed, embarrassed at the question, and her own implicit weakness. How could a slicer and a nosy astromech droid help her heal the clone, or bring the original Skywalker back? There was no way that such a thing was even possible--she couldn't even begin to think of how they might help--

The R2 unit retreated from Skywalker, turned its dome and sensors towards her, clearly considering her request. With a quiet whistle, it began to move towards her--

\--and a blue-white spark of lightning moved between them, lancing from Mara into the droid. The R2 unit slammed backward, narrowly missing the clone, who didn't even blink as the droid sailed past him. Two holo-sculptures and one real one fell over with a clatter onto the floor as the astromech hit the wall and bounced forward. There was an electronic scream of agony as all of its circuits fried, and the droid fell over with a thud. 

Mara gasped. Ghent jumped. The clone, as usual, had not moved. 

For a moment she thought the R2's arc welder had misfired--or it had decided to attack her after all. Then her brain caught up with her reflexes, and she realized that she must have lashed out with the Force, pushing it back instinctively--and wildly miscalculated. 

"Mara?" Ghent panted beside her, his eyes wide as his gaze flickered from her to the clone to the astromech and back again. "What just happened--?" 

"Take the droid and get out," Mara said, pushing him towards the door. "I'll talk to you later." 

"Mara, what--" 

Her patience--already thin and stretched by the evening's events, snapped and she whirled on him like a wild vornskr. "NOW!" she shouted. Blue-white lightning crackled around her in a halo as her temper flared. 

Not being a complete idiot, Ghent obeyed. 

***

As soon as Ghent was safely out the door with the R2 unit, Mara returned to the living room. The clone was still at the table, unreactive and unmoving. The glass of Niphrelian wine was right there on the table where she had left it. 

The blue-white lightning was still flickering along her body, sparking in the air and sending any unbraided strands of hair on end. After months of a long, slow, endless slog of apathy and guilt, adrift and empty on a sea of memories and despair, she was angry again, angry as she had not been since that journey to Wayland, when she realized that Palpatine's ghost was manipulating her mind. 

"All right," she said to nothing and no one in particular. "This ends here and now. I have no idea what the hell is happening, and I'm _tired_ of it. Stop it. Stop it _now_. I'm done with this." 

She reached out to the Force, and the power deepened, as she opened to the frustration, rage and grief that she had avoided ever since Skywalker's death. The lights in the apartment flickered and went out, but she was glowing so fiercely she barely noticed. She looked up to see the clone's eyes riveted onto her, his own hair standing on end, an electric and anticipatory on his expression that no doubt mirrored her own. He was waiting for something. 

Waiting for what? 

She summoned more power, more feelings. Maybe it was the dark side, but she was beyond caring now. She was done running. She was done with responsibility, with professionalism, with that calm mask that she wore to block out the volatile emotions that swirled inside.

"I'm sorry I killed you!" she shouted, the words pouring out in a torrent as the dam burst inside her. "I don't know what happened! I didn't mean to! I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I feel it every day and it won't bring you back, I'm sorry, now just leave me the fuck alone, leave me in _peace_ , stop haunting me, damn it--" 

She couldn't have stopped even if she wanted to. She didn't know who she was shouting to, who she was begging forgiveness for--from herself? From Skywalker? From the clone? It didn't matter. None of it mattered.

Frustration. Rage. Pain. Grief. So much power. So much feeling, all channelled through her body, seeking an outlet. Over and over again, she'd squelched her emotions down, only to have them emerge on their own beyond her conscious control, spilling out in waves that Sturm and Drang sensed and hungered for, interfering with droids and electronics, contaminating her dreams.

Since Skywalker's death, she had been the architect of her own misery. There was no one else who she could blame it on. She had stagnated and failed, unable to move forward, and if she continued much further on this path, it would kill her. She would take too many drugs to blot out the feelings, stiffle the emotions, numb herself. She would wake up unable to handle the clone's unblinking stare and kill them both. She would fall to the Dark Side and be no better than C'baoth. Or Vader. Or Palpatine. 

She was dying. She was the center of the dark whirlwind, that vortex of emotions as it consumed her, and it was more than her body could bear. She was shaking, screaming, and she was aware that the clone was jerking and flailing as his motions linked to hers, but it was too far away, too much for her to do anything about now. 

_Skywalker's face as the lightsaber stabbed through his chest--the life fading in his eyes as his body collapsed before her--_

She let it all pass through her, channelled it into the ground, like a lightning rod in the storm. It was not a technique that Skywalker or Palpatine had ever suggested, it was all instinct, flaring up at the last second before she was consumed by her own inner fires. She was nothing but a vessel that emotions could flow through, and when it ended, she would be empty again-- 

And then, merciful darkness as she passed out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had originally thought to wrap up the story in three chapters, but the plot keeps getting away from me, so there is at least one more chapter yet to come.


	4. Chapter 4

"Mara? Are you all right?"

She opened her eyes. She was under the table in living room of her apartment, and for a moment, she couldn't remember how she'd gotten there. Every muscle in her body ached, stiff and sore, and the throb in her head was worse. Had she been drinking? She vaguely recalled a glass of wine and another long evening in the clone's company--

\--and then Ghent had shown up unexpectedly with Skywalker's astromech in tow, and everything had gone to shit--

Well. She'd deal with that later. Right now, it was enough to be still alive and relatively unhurt by whatever she'd unleashed--no blood, no bruises, no broken bones, nothing she hadn't handled a million times before. Most of the furniture in the apartment was still intact, though all the electronics had short-circuited and the room was dark. The only light was from the glow of speeding traffic and illuminated buildings streaming in from the windows lining the room, resulting in a fuzzy, dreamlike quality that only augmented the blowback from the Force storm she'd endured.

She was relieved to realize that the pressure that had been building up in her chest for months was gone, and so was the tension she hadn't realized she was carrying until it was was no longer there. Despite her weakness, she was calmer and more at peace than she had been since Luke Skywalker stumbled into her life almost a year earlier. For the first time since Skywalker's death, she felt relieved, as if she had unexpectedly turned a corner and now the worst was past. It was an odd, unfamiliar sensation, and she handled it cautiously, as if it would vanish at any moment.

"Mara?"

Someone was calling her, faint but insistent--oddly familiar, but she couldn't quite place it. Had Ghent come back for her? He was the only one who might investigate, who knew something had gone wrong. She dragged herself forward onto her hands and knees and began the clumsy, tedious process of extricating herself from under the table so she could find out for herself.

The clone was in his chair at the far end of the table, just as she had left him. He hadn't moved, but his eyes were closed, and his breath was steady and calm. She wondered if he was capable of dreaming, and hoped that if he could, his dreams were good one.

There was no one else in the room with her. She turned, frowning, as she scanned for the unknown speaker--reluctant to reach out with the Force again lest she trigger more explosions. But there was no sign that Ghent, or anyone else, had returned to the apartment since her little episode. So who was calling her?

"Mara? Can you hear me?" A man's voice. _Right_ behind her, as if he were whispering in her ear.

She turned.Standing before her, misty like a holo fritzing in and out of focus, was the original Luke Skywalker, still dressed in the dark commando fatigues she remembered from the Mount Tantiss throne room. There was no sign of any wounds, but otherwise, he was just as she remembered him from the final moments of his life.

Mara froze. Even as she stared, the dispassionate part of her mind noted that he didn't bother to breathe like a normal human anymore, because he wasn't. Instead he stood there, watching her. Waiting for a response.

She'd seen and done a number of strange and improbable things over the course of her life, as the Emperor's personal agent and as a smuggler struggling to get by. Touched as she was by the Force, she encountered the odd and the impossible on a regular basis. But nothing in life thus far had led her to believe in the existence of ghosts as anything more than superstitions or metaphors--and there was no denying the reality that confronted her now, no questioning of her sanity that could keep Skywalker's specter at bay.

For months now, he'd chased her in her dreams, and she'd run from him. Now he was here in front of her, and she wasn't frightened at all. She was, she realized, furious.

All this time, she'd believed he was gone. All this time, she'd believed that death was permanent. All this time, he'd been here, and he hadn't--she hadn't--

"What the _hell_ are you doing here, Skywalker?" she said at last, fighting to hide her inner turmoil. "You've been dead for months! Why wait until _now_ of all times to put in an appearance?"

Luke frowned at this. "I have been _trying_ to contact you since the beginning," he corrected her. "You never let me in until now."

She closed her eyes as the implications sunk in. The dreams of Skywalker chasing her through the _Wild Karrde_ , reaching out to her imploringly as she fled. The flickers at the corner of her eyelids that vanished when she examined them closely. Sturm and Drang's fascination with her, the drools and stares as they stalked her with their eyes, as if sensing a presence that they could detect and she couldn't.

It hadn't been her imagination, or her crazed, pent-up emotions playing tricks on her. Skywalker _had_ been haunting her all along.

More than haunting. Back on Wayland, he had--

"You!" she said, as the pieces fell into place. "You were the one who saved me from the explosion when C'baoth died. You were the reason the clone had no burns!"

Luke nodded. "Yes," he agreed. "It wasn't much, but I did what I could to help."

"But I _killed_ you!" Mara said, utterly astounded. "And the clone would have killed you, too, if I'd given him the chance. Why?"

Skywalker looked at her with that insufferable Jedi calm, and gave her an insufferable Jedi answer. "It was the right thing to do," he said.

Oh, how noble. She ought to have known even death couldn't keep that idealism down. She changed the subject. "What do you want from me, Skywalker? You've been trying to reach me ever since Wayland for some reason. Here I am. I'm listening. Spill it."

She crossed her hands over her chest and braced herself for the blow. What he said sent her reeling--but for entirely different reasons than she'd expected.

"I wanted to ask you not to blame yourself for what happened on Wayland," Skywalker said slowly. "I wanted to tell you that _I_ don't blame you. It was an accident." 

It took Mara a moment before she could trust herself to speak. "How do you know?" she managed at last. "I don't know what happened. It could have been C'baoth--or Palpatine influencing my actions--I've never made that kind of mistake before--"

"Believe me, I can tell when someone is trying to kill me," Skywalker said. "My reflexes are well-honed in that regard. If you'd actually meant to hurt me, I likely would have dodged."

"But--"

"Yes, you ran a lightsaber through my chest. I remember that part vividly. From a certain pint of view, you murdered me. But from my perspective, it was just as much my mistake as it was yours. If I had paid more attention to my surroundings--if I hadn't gotten in your way--"

This was not something she had considered before, and it gave her pause. The thought of letting go of her guilt left her unmoored and adrift, uncertain of where her moral compass lay, and she didn't like it.

Skywalker cut through her protestations before she could sputter a coherent response.

"I didn't want to die that day. I went into that battle sincerely hoping that I wouldn't. But five years ago at Endor, I made my peace with death. I never expected to live out that day. In a sense, you could say, I've been working on borrowed time ever since. My life since then has been a gift, one I never expected to have.

"I had a good life, Mara. There was so much that I wanted to do, so much I hoped to accomplish. But everything I worked for will go on without me. The New Republic is strong, the Empire is no more, and the Jedi will rise again--if not this generation, then the next. I have no doubt of that.

"Besides, if I had to die, at least my death bought you your freedom."

She froze. He'd hit her squarely in the heart with that one. "It wasn't worth it," she whispered.

He raised an eyebrow, and she realized that she had insulted him too late to call the words back. "You value yourself so lightly, Mara," was all he said.

"I'm sorry," she said, unable to meet his eyes. "It's just--there must have been some other way, that didn't involve you dying to free me from Palpatine's control. There's always another way."

"I've always wanted to help you," he said. "And if my death was how it happened, well--I've made my peace with that. I hope you will, too."

Mara nodded slowly, not trusting her voice with a response.

"I kept trying to reach out to you, but your shields are amazingly strong," Skywalker continued absently. "Leia said you'd come around in time, but I wanted to speed things up a bit if I could."

Mara recalled that odd, curious expression she'd seen on Organa Solo's face in the aftermath of the Wayland battle, then again in her quarters when she'd offered Mara the two lightsabers. So Organa Solo had been in contact with Skywalker's ghost then. That explained a lot.

"And of course, I couldn't resist leaving a few hints for Artoo to find."

Was there no end to the revelations? "So the spark that short-circuited him was your doing, then?" she managed.

"Nope, that was all you," Skywalker said with a smile. "Like I said, you're amazingly strong when you want to be. You put up such resistance, I couldn't get through to you, and all that energy had to go somewhere eventually. I was relieved to see it didn't take you out with it."

There was an awkward pause as Mara stared at him, trying to take it all in. "Is there no way you can come back?" she said at last.

Skywalker shrugged. "For now, I'm here as you see me. Eventually, it'll be time for me to move on to somewhere else. I'm strong enough to interact with the material world for now, but it's not--permanent."

"I don't understand," she said.

"It's.... well, I won't go into the metaphysics, but imagine the Force is a rushing river, and we are like the eddies and swirls in the current, as that energy is temporarily given form. When we die, the body fades, and that energy disappears into the flow again. Because my spirit is strong in the Force, I'm able to hold onto the memory of who and what I was for a while, but eventually I'll move on and lose this small self in the midst a much greater whole. Does that help?"

"Maybe. But what does this have to do with my question?"

"There are tales of Force-users in my situation who've embedded their consciousness in artifacts and relics, but that's a pale imitation of life in my opinion. I've also heard stories of spirits strong enough to possess the living and take control of their bodies for their own--but again, that's not a life I want for myself."

"If we build you a new body--"

"You destroyed all the cloning cylinders," he reminded her gently.

"I'm sure there are more out there somewhere," Mara retorted. "We just have to find them--"

"It wouldn't work."

"How do you know?" Why was he trying to make everything so difficult? Didn't he see how hard she was trying to help, how important this was to her?

He looked at her, steadily, unblinking, as if he sensed her train of thought. She couldn't win a staring contest with a ghost and dropped her gaze. "Clones aren't mindless automatons," he said. "They're just people--who have been grown in tanks, and subjected to flash-learning and indoctrination from the moment of conception-- but people nonetheless. They're twins that are separated from the original by space and time and whatever powers ordered the cloning. They have just as much of a--soul, let's call it--as anybody else. And it wouldn't be right to create a person--anyone--just so I could steal their body."

He was right, and she hated it. Her cheeks burned, but she couldn't let the matter drop.

"There has to be a way," she insisted.

Why did she care so much? He was right, damn it, and she was wrong. He'd come back long enough to forgive her--wasn't that enough? Wouldn't it be better for him to fade away now that their business was complete?

But she didn't want him to fade. She didn't want any more ghosts. What she wanted was a world with Skywalker in it. And he was telling her that it was impossible.

"There is a way," he said hesitantly. His eyes flicked to the clone and back, so quickly she almost missed it. "If someone were to willingly step aside, then I could--"

"If Luuke agreed to let you take over, you could do it," Mara said, leaping ahead to the conclusion that Skywalker had clearly been avoiding.

"Yes. If he was ready to pass on. If he chose freely, and accepted it willingly. If he didn't, he would fight me and it wouldn't be a stable connection, even if I were able to subdue him. The body would know on some level that I was foreign, and refuse to hold me. And like I said, that's not how I want to live. Stealing life from someone else--that's the Dark Side."

Mara sighed. Jedi nobility had never been an act with Skywalker -- it was something that he'd always carried with him, an unassailable sense of right and wrong. Even death hadn't changed him much. That was oddly comforting, somehow.

"So Luuke has to die for you to live?" she repeated.

"Everything has a price, Mara. If he's willing to pay it--it can be done. If not, then I'll continue as I am. It's not so bad being dead, you know. It's just--different."

Why did she want Skywalker alive so much? Why were they even talking about this?

"You shouldn't be dead. It's not fair. It's not right." She sounded like such a baby. She knew very well fairness had nothing to do with it.

"You think if you can bring me back, it will make up for what you've done," Skywalker said gently. "It doesn't work like that. I forgave you long ago. The only question is whether or not you can forgive yourself."

He was right. She knew it, and she didn't want to think about it. It was easier to continue down this mad road of make-believe than it was to deal with the complicated stew of her own feelings.

"I'll ask him," she said. "But I don't know if he's capable of giving consent."

Briefly, she sketched out her interactions with the clone's mind to Skywalker--how much C'baoth's tampering had altered him, how little individuality remained. "He might as well still be in a coma most of the time. He's like a puppet, only I'm the one pulling the strings now instead of C'baoth. And I haven't been able to fix that."

Skywalker shook his head, sending a cascade of blond hair flopping in every direction. "That's C'baoth's doing, not yours. And--you've shown him more mercy and compassion than C'baoth ever did."

"But if he's not capable of consent--"

"Then you have to decide for him," Skywalker said. "You're his guardian, and protector. If anyone has that right, it's you. But ask him first."

She took a deep, shuddering breath, looking over at the clone, still dozing in his chair. Was there anyone inside left to ask?

But she knew Skywalker was right. She had to ask, and abide by the response.

She had no reason to ask another man to die to fix her mistakes, even if he was a human vegetable. She'd sat with him and ate with him, and helped him. He was alive, and sentient in his own way, when she could reach to him.

She was afraid to ask him, afraid to press forward and learn the answer. But how could she retreat now, having come this far?

She walked over to the clone's chair, as he slept, dreaming whatever dreams he could. Would he consider her request to be a good dream or another nightmare? Or was he even capable of such a distinction?

She knew that non-sentient animals and even plants struggled to live. They didn't fear death the way most sentients did, but they also desired life, and would fight to keep it when threatened. Would Luuke be any different in that regard?

She put a hand on his shoulder. The clone stirred at her touch, but didn't awaken. "Luuke," she whispered, and his eyes snapped open, focused on hers with eerie stillness. As she'd done many times before, she reached out with the Force to touch his mind.

As before, they communicated without words, only images and feelings that her mind insisted on translating into language whenever possible. The clone was curious, eager for instruction but he didn't know what to make of what she asked for.

It was hard to explain what she wanted. She resorted to Skywalker's metaphor of a rushing stream, a glowing, teaming river of Force-energy, with bubbles of personalities forming in among the eddies, only to dissolve and sweep away again in the flow. _This is what we are, and what we will be,_ she explained, as the clone watched in fascination. _The same thing underlies everyone, but it changes form, and so do we. Can you--do you--will you join the flow?_

As she expected, he didn't understand. Choice was not something that Luuke had not experienced very often, and it confused him. She'd learned that the hard way that even a choice between two different brands of ration bars was paralyzing for him. Initiative and independence were traits that C'baoth had not valued in his servants; Luuke expected to be told what to do and that was that.

To her surprise, after a moment of struggle, the clone sent her back an image in return, of floating in the liquid comfort of the cloning vats, everything soft and warm, with no distinction between inside and out. He could reach out with the Force and feel the minds of his fellows in the tank with him, and all was quiet and calm, steady and repetitive. Everyone together, not alone; no choice and no pain. Happiness.

She realized, with a start, that he was sharing a memory with her from his past. That his mental union with C'baoth and his erratic connection with her was the closest he'd come to replicating that sense of unity and peace. His sense of self was so porous, so diffuse, so unbounded by his physical body, he was halfway to dissolving in the flow of the Force already. It wouldn't take much for him to let go entirely.

 _What is wanted is like that?_ Luuke asked. _Is this so, Master?_

She clamped down hard on her emotions; she didn't want Luuke to be swayed by her own conflicting feelings on the matter or how much she hated when he used that title for her. _It doesn't matter what 'Master' wants_ , she sent. _What do *you* want?_

It was not a question she had thought to ask the clone before. It was not a question that anyone had asked the clone before.

 _Want that_ , Luuke said in her mind, thrusting the memory of immersion in the vat before her. _Want to go back._

Oh. It was that simple, that easy, then. She realized that she was choking up with emotion, and was glad she didn't need her physical voice to speak. She had never expected anything like this from him.

All those months together, and she'd never known he felt this way. All those months, and she'd never even thought to ask.

But this, at least, she could give to him.

Yes, she said gently, sending feelings of acceptance and warmth, an eternally flowing current of energy, moving through the entire galaxy. It's like that.

The clone sighed and relaxed in acquiescence. Yes.

Mara let go of their connection and opened her eyes to see Skywalker's ghost watching her intently. "How much of that did you pick up?" she asked hoarsely, hoping he wouldn't notice how close she was to tears

"Enough."

"Will it work?"

"Yes," Skywalker said. "But he needs to be lying down for this."

She got Luuke out of his chair and onto the couch on the opposite side of the room, careful to guide him over the wreckage of the sculptures that the R2 unit had left in its wake.

"All right, Luuke," she said to the clone, settling down on the couch next to him. "Relax, and let this man--" she gestured to Skywalker's figure in the air -- "show you what to do. How to stand aside."

In her mind, the clone nodded, though he never took his gaze away from hers and appeared to ignore Skywalker's ghost completely.

_Hold/Touch/Contact?_

Mara stared at the clone in shock. It was the first time in her experience he had ever requested something of her. She'd had to touch him to help him in their daily life, had found that a hand on his shoulder could boost their Force connection with each other, help communicate her wishes better--but the idea of touching him further, of embracing him had never crossed her mind before. She wasn't a touchy person. She never had been.

She was asking him to die for her. From her perspective, it might be a sad, pathetic life, but it was his and he was surrendering it without complaint for her. The least she could do was grant his last request.

"Yes," she said, sending that acknowledgement back to him in waving ripples even as she spoke aloud. "I will."

Before she could lose her nerve, she leaned over and wrapped both her arms around his chest, pillowing her head against his shoulder so she couldn't see his face.

"Ready when you are, Skywalker," she whispered.

She didn't watch. She kept her mind well away from whatever was happening inside the clone; whatever happened between the two men, whatever exchange they had, was nothing she wanted to be part of. Whatever happened in that realm, was private and ought to remain so.

And if she were honest, she didn't think she could bear it, watching the clone slip away in her arms.

Even without the Force, she knew exactly when it happened, the moment the clone surrendered and Skywalker's spirit slipped into his place. She could feel the catch in his breath as his chest rose and fell under her, could feel a subtle shift in balance and posture and presence that the clone had always lacked. Something that had always been dead or dormant was alive again, and the hair on the back of her neck stood up as a shiver passed through her and then vanished.

She raised her head off his shoulder to meet his gaze. Pale blue eyes stared back at her--and there was a person again inside, with his own thoughts and feelings, not her own emotions reflected back at her. She looked into Skywalker's eyes, and it was as if he'd never been away.

"I have both my hands again," he whispered.

It took a moment for her to realize what he meant--she'd almost forgotten that Vader had taken his right hand off at the wrist, and the sensation was the most novel part of stepping into this new body. In the next breath, she realized that her arms were still wrapped around him, and this wasn't clone anymore, this was Luke Skywalker and this was not the sort of position she wanted to be in right now--

She let go of him and pulled away. He let her go, blinking in wonder as he brought his hands up to his face to study, flexing both of them back and forth and laughing in wonder.

"How do you feel?" she said. "Is it working?"

For a moment, he didn't answer, and she was afraid that something was wrong with the clone's vocal equipment after all, that only moans and squeals would issue from his mouth. But the words, when they came, were recognizably Skywalker's, and Skywalker's voice.

"It's a wonderful thing, being embodied," he said. "I hope I never taken it for granted again." He paused for a moment. "And yes, this body isn't fighting me. It--recognizes me. As if I belong here. As if I've never left. I don't know what relationship there is between spirit and body, and yet--"

For a moment, Mara was drawn up in Skywalker's experience as he opened to her, offering a glimpse of the sensations he couldn't put into words, yet wanted her so desperately to understand. For a moment as the Force swirled around them both, she could see his body recognizing and responding to the new spirit, yearning for the union, and sealing them together, perfectly matched with nothing out of place in the new configuration. What Joruus C'baoth broken was now healed. What was healed was now whole.

Then she was back in her own body, on the couch beside him, both of them trembling.

"You came back," she said. "No one would ever believe it was possible."

"Is that going to be a problem? Is that a miracle we have to explain? Leia mentioned something about a cover-up--"

"The hope was that we might be able to heal the clone someday-- and there's so much prejudice we thought it would be better if no one realized what he was--but this--"

"This is better," Skywalker agreed. "For me, at least." He tried to stand up, wobbled and fell backwards on the couch with a thud. "Poor Luuke. I--am grateful to him."

Mara stared at the ceiling. This was why she'd saved the clone, wasn't it? She hadn't understood it at the time, but she did now. "So now we're even, Skywalker."

"Yes, we are. And you're free, too. Free of Palpatine, free of guilt--what are you going to do with all this freedom?"

"I don't know. I've been helping Karrde with his smuggler's alliance, integrating it into New Republic systems as alternatives to the main shipping lines rather than going underground. It's rough going, but we're starting to make some progress. But is it what I want to do with my life? I don't know," she said.

She got up and retrieved Skywalker's lightsaber, still on the floor where she had dropped it earlier in the evening. It felt like several lifetimes ago now. She handed it to him. "Your sister gave this to me. Said you would want me to have it. But I think it's always been yours."

"Oh. Thank you," he said, clipping it to his belt. "What happened to the other lightsaber? My old one from Bespin, that the clone was using?"

"I have that, too. It's in my room," Mara said as she started to stand up again. "I'll go and get it."

He pulled her back down. "No. I want you to keep it."

Mara frowned. "Why?"

"Because--you are the only person who will remember him. Who he was. What he did. Keep it, in his memory. It hasn't been mine for a long time."

He was right, but that didn't mean she had to like it. "I'm not a Jedi," she protested.

"You don't have to be. Like I said, you're free now, free to be whatever you want to be," Skywalker said. "Mara, I know you already have a lot of responsibilities with Karrde, and you don't have to decide this now. But I could use your help. If you're interested--if you're willing--"

"You'd trust a woman who killed you?" she asked.

"And brought me back," he said, with that same farmboy earnestness that she remembered all too well from before. "None of this would be possible with you."

She hesitated. "I don't know what to say--"

"Think about it," Luke said, sensing her uncertainty. "There's no rush. There's a place for you whenever you want it. And you don't owe me anything for it."

The unexpected entrance of Zakarisz Ghent into the living room spared Mara the necessity of a response. "Mara--" he began, before he caught sight of Skywalker and stopped in mid-sentence, stunned.

She knew she shouldn't laugh, but she couldn't help herself. Even without the Force, without less common sense than your average vornskr, Ghent had seen the clone, and knew immediately what had happened.

"I--er, thought you were dead," Ghent said to Skywalker, when he'd recovered himself.

"I was," Skywalker said serenely. "It's a long story."

With an electronic squeal of joy, the R2 unit burst into the room for a long and messy reunion with Skywalker.

"How did you get back in here? I locked the door--" Mara said to Ghent over the tumult of beeps and whistles.

"Yeah, if you can call that 'secure'. I can break those encryptions in my sleep." He waved a hand dismissively towards the apartment entrance. "I took the R2 unit back to my place and patched it up. Figured it was one of those weird Force things that happen to you sometimes, and we'd sort it all out in the morning. But as soon as I got the droid up and running, he insisted we return immediately to make sure you were all right."

He squinted at her and Skywalker again. "That's how you got him back, right? Zapped him with all those sparks to get him out of the coma? I saw that in a holo once--"

"No," Mara said, cutting him off before he could get any further. "That's not what happened at all."

"That's too bad, because it would be really cool if you could do it on purpose," Ghent said cheerfully, not deterred in the least by her expression. "When General bel Iblis hears about this--"

"No, he will _not_ ," Mara said firmly.

"Aww, Mara, you're no fun--"

***

The first light of dawn was peeping over the edge of the horizon by the time she had escorted her unexpected visitors to the door. When she was alone in the apartment at last, she went to her room and pulled Skywalker's old lightsaber out of the back of the hidden drawer where she kept the mementos too important to discard but too dangerous or painful to keep in view.

Once it had belonged to Anakin Skywalker, Jedi Knight of the Old Republic. Then it had passed to his son, Luke, before tumbling into a ventilation shaft on a flourishing mining outpost in the Outer Rim along with Luke's hand, and thought lost forever. Somehow it had been retrieved by one of the Emperor's agents and stored in his vast underground storage facilities on Wayland. And Joruus C'baoth had given it to a clone made from that very hand to wield against the original.

She had no idea of the strange twists and turns of fate that had saved the lightsaber and the hand that clenched it from destruction, or which of the Emperor's many agents had retrieved it. This didn't surprise her. He'd had many secrets she'd never been privy to. It would have been funny, she thought, for an Emperor's Hand to handle an actual hand, she thought absently, but she was glad she'd had no part in it.

She ignited the lightsaber, heard the familiar the humm as the blue-white blade expanded in her hands, crackling and glowing as she tilted it from side to side. She'd never used one since her battle against the clone on Wayland. She hadn't dared.

"He would want you to have it," Organa Solo had said, as she passed the lightsaber over to the woman who had killed her brother. Organa Solo, who had seen her brother's ghost, and known he wasn't as dead as he ought to be. Organa Solo, who had seen Mara's suffering and guilt, and had waited patiently for her to come around. She'd been right about that, too.

And the clone would want her to have it, too, inasmuch as he was capable of wanting anything. Poor Luuke. He deserved a better life than that what fate had dealt him. She hoped he was well, wherever he was.

"Good-bye, Luuke," she whispered. "Thank you."

She extinguished the lightsaber, clipped it firmly to her belt. Skywalker had been right when he'd told her to keep it, in memory of the clone, who hadn't asked for any of the evils that had befallen him, who had been a victim of circumstances rather than a true enemy. No one else would remember Luuke--or even knew he existed--but she would.

And in a way, Luuke was still here. His body lived on. The difference was that Skywalker lived there now, too.

She reached for her comlink, flicked it on. She knew that her boss wasn't likely to respond at this hour unless it was an emergency, but she was too restless to wait until they could talk in person. "Karrde?" she said. "This is Mara. Circumstances have changed--and trust me, you'll want to see what I'm talking about for yourself. Come to Coruscant as soon as you can."

He wouldn't believe it until he saw it, no matter what she told him, so there was no point in lengthy explanations. And besides, if Ghent's reaction was anything to go by, the look on Karrde's face when he saw Skywalker would be priceless.

"Oh, and I might need to take a leave of absence soon, so start thinking about who can cover for me while I'm gone," she added, before severing the link. She put the device back in her pocket, and started for the door.

Skywalker had been right about something else, too. For the first time that she could remember, she was truly free.

She was looking forward to seeing what her life would be like now that she was free of ghosts and old blood debts.

As she stepped out of her apartment, she glanced down the hallway where Skywalker was waiting for the turbolift, bracing himself with one hand against his R2 unit for support while Ghent nattered away in his ear. He looked up as she approached, his polite expression at Ghent's rambles shifting into a delighted smile when he saw her.

"Hang on a minute," she called. "I'll come with you."


End file.
